Tuesday, April 28, 2015

The Home Depot Experiment

I like to do little, what I call, "social experiments". Mostly out of curiosity, partly because it's fun. So a few days ago I did an experiment. I don't really know much about light bulbs "blah blah blah. Thomas Edison... Blahty blah blah... Electricity... Something something" but I managed to bluff my way through it.

Well I was actually quite proud of myself. I spent about 15 minutes talking to this real nice young couple about lights. I'm not sure what they were originally shopping for when they stopped me to ask for help.

"Excuse me, Neil, can you help us out?", the guy asked me.

"Well hot diggity dog! Can I ever! Whatcha looking for?" Of course, I had to look down at my smock real quick to see what department I was from. "I work in electrical but I'll do what I can". Electrical. Great, I hate electronics and electric. This should be fun. Something like roofing or tile would've been better.

That's when he told me what they needed help with but my inner monologue drowned him out and I missed it entirely.

At some point, though, started to tell me how they were painting their kitchen. Excellent! I can work with this. That's when lightbulbs hit me.

"Well what's the lighting like in there? Ya lookin to brighten things up? I've found that the lightbulbs make a difference in the final outcome. Them regular incandescent bulbs don't really bring out the paint like our newest cfl's do." I could feel the whole pitch working itself out already.

"See, these are an improvement over Nikolai Tesla's original concept. Now, everybody knows Edison beat him to patent the bulb but Tesla was working on crisper light." I've found it helps to name-drop.

For the next 10 minutes or so we discussed wattage, I explained to him that changing out all his bulbs would not only save him money on his electric bill but be a sound financial move "on accounta they last over 15 years." Sure, that sounds good to me. I even explained to him that with cfl's "we have a 90 return policy. If one burns out or quits working for any reason in the next 90 days, we will refund you. Just tell them Neil told you about our promo."

These were good folks so I wanted to get them the best deal possible since they started putting cfl bulbs in their cart. By my guess they picked up about 60 bulbs. I think it was a fantastic investment for them. I wished them luck then excused myself so I could go to the back. "Well, I hope this works out well for ya. Come back and see me and show me pictures after it's all painted and well-lit. I've gotta go take my break now, they get kinda snitty about us not sticking to the schedule."

Then I headed away from them, turned the corner and set the smock on an end cap. Now, I'm sure Neil is a nice guy and I hope he appreciates everything I did for his good name. I also hope they didn't charge him for a new smock when he came out of the bathroom to find his missing.

I still needed to get back to the receiving department so I could get someone to sign for a delivery of stone. Granted, I might've wanted to pick up a few things but I figured since I probably wasn't going to get Neil's employee discount then I'd just go across the street to Lowe's.

Now, I learned in this experiment that if you're wearing an orange smock in Home Depot people just assume you know what you're talking about. Also, I've apparently got a friendly, trustworthy looking face. Oh, and I'm pretty sure cfl's are still a mystery to the rest of the world. I don't know what makes them better, I just bought a bunch when they were on sale because they looked neat with those little curly Q tails and such.